Bourne is wrong-footed by the sharp invention of Burtonby ZOE ANDERSON for the Independent

If the caricatures lack vitality, so does the choreography. We keep seeing the full cast bustling through life - the daily routine, with celebrations for Hallowe'en or Christmas. Bourne's company remain lively, and they act with their whole bodies, really putting their backs into each gesture. They can't lift these slackly timed, repetitive numbers.

Modern myth with the heart cut outby SARAH CRAMPTON for the Daily Telegraph

What he has produced is a fantastic family show. My eight-year-old son, Augusto, thought it was the best ballet he has ever seen.

It looks wonderful, is full of brilliant comic detail, and engaging life. But Bourne has done the thing I least expected of him. He has missed the heart not only of Burton's film, but of his own best work.

Catching up after an absence:Edward ScissorhandsMatthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands certainly looks sharp, but its steps and music need more edge, says David Dougill for The Sunday Times

Tim Burton’s film Edward Scissorhands, a gothic fairy tale set in middle America, with Johnny Depp as the wistfully engaging and affectingly pathetic boy, left unfinished by his inventor, with scissors for hands, was made in 1990. Since then, its authors have protected it from any other medium: otherwise, there would have been a musical.

But Matthew Bourne has been gestating a dance adaptation for years, and now we have it, for a long run at Sadler’s Wells (until February), with a tour to follow. The good news is that it looks gorgeous. The downside is that it drags. It cries out for songs. For all the energy, there isn’t sufficient dance interest to make it a ballet or sustain it as a “dancical”.

Matthew Bourne is fast becoming the Madonna of the contemporary dance world - the ‘queen of reinvention’. Hot on the success of his modern adaptations of Swan Lake, La Sylphide, Carmen, Cinderella and the Nutcracker, he has now turned his hand to recreating a version of the genre that most inspires him - film.

Three months ago, Rachel Morrow was on-stage in Dundee with the David Hughes Dance Company. The next time we see her back in Scotland, she'll be on tour in Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands. It's the kind of career leap, and personal challenge, that makes you think "to dance would be an awfully big adventure".

Scissorhands cutting it on stage courtesy of the Bourne identityby KELLY APTER for the Scotsman

WITH a smile that belies the gremlins in his throat, Matthew Bourne strides into Sadler's Wells theatre. Croaking apologetically, he explains a nasty cold has finally brought his hectic life to a standstill. Two telephone interviews scheduled for earlier that day were cancelled, but given that I've travelled down to London from Edinburgh to see him, Bourne has dragged himself out of his sick bed.

"It can be the kid who's made fun of at school for any reason. It could be someone of disability, a racial thing, it could be a sexuality thing. I think everyone can relate to that and I think that's why he's such a universal ultimate outsider character," he added.

At the cutting edge of danceby JACKIE McGLONE for the Scotland on Sunday

Reviews have indeed been mixed, says Lez Brotherston, designer of the show and an associate artist of Bourne's company New Adventures. "Stuff them," says the shaven-headed Scouser, at his home in London's east end. "I've no faith in any of the critics since I overheard them plotting about the spiteful reviews they were going to give Northern Ballet Theatre's Dracula, which I'd designed. Acidic, nasty people."

Edward Scissorhands is a tragic fairy tale with a human heart, the story of the unwitting outcast, “an uncommonly gentle man”, ripe for the big stage Bourne makeover. This is explicitly a stage adaptation of the film (it isn’t billed as a ballet) and despite a few slightly odd tweaks to the story, it is faithful to its origin, particularly with Lez Brotherston's stunning set and the magical movie musical score of Danny Elfman via Terry Davis which weaves the Burtonesque gauze around the production.

But despite the hype, Bourne doesn’t push the dimensions of the narrative to its gothic or magical extremes in his choreographic adaptation. New Adventures is company full of consummate character actors, and the inhabitants of Hope Springs are sharply and comically observed, but it’s a “Desperate Housewives” style suburbia of tame types, complete with an oversexed and underdressed Edie Britt, rather than the more sinister, ultra conservative, slightly loopy and closed off small town community of the film. In this version, the religious Evercreeches appear more freakish and marginalised than the graceful, benign Edward. In fact, there is very little sense of community reaction to the arrival of Edward and his monstrous deformity. They’re straight in there with a poolside barbecue welcome party, practically ignoring him as he hovers on their outskirts, bemusedly twiddling his blades, until they realize he can jazz up their hedges and hairstyles and then there’s plenty of visual fun to be had with his novel artistry.

The scissor hands, a genius of costuming, were underplayed, limited to performing cunning topiary rather than fundamentally choreographed in. They only truly came into play in the duet between Edward & Kim at the closing stages of the piece when we caught a glimpse of inspired originality, the scissors wrapping gently around Kim’s body, suddenly as sensitive and safe as loving fingers.

Bourne claims that you can do a close up on stage but in the second circle at Sadlers Wells you need opera glasses to get intimate with Edward’s fear, loneliness and longing. The enduring images of the film are those shots of Johnny Depp, gazing mournfully, looking so tragic, haunted and alone... the evidence of his ultimate humanity in the face of the freakish, shallow suburbanites around him. The choreography isn’t ingenious enough here to replace cinematography as the tool for conveying the emotional core of the story and at times Bourne opts for bolstering up the comedy elements rather than tackling the tragedy at the centre of this fable.

There are big dance numbers to console us; the outdoor party jigging and jiving, the romantic snowy ice duet, the clever dream-sequence topiary ballet and the festive, fizzing swing dance climax. But is Bourne unwittingly recycling shades of past productions? Ensemble character pieces are starting to feel formulaic. If it weren’t for the magnificent score and set and committed performances from the company I’d have felt rather cheated.

So hot on the heels of “Play without Words”, is this “Musical without Songs”? There were certainly clear nods to some musical greats including West Side Story & Grease for starters. I’m inclined to agree with David Dougill, a few songs would have helped chip the story along. But this is Bourne style dance theatre and all credit to the cast and crew for producing a show that hundreds of people have seen at Sadlers over Christmas and the New Year, the vast majority of which have been totally thrilled and thoroughly entertained and maybe, let’s hope, encouraged to see more dance in the future

Thanks a lot, Lindsey. I share your views about Matthew bourne's "Edward Scissorhands". Tim Burton's film is one of the delights of US cinema, featuring strong visuals, several performances to treasure and a message about [....].

The stage show is enjoyable but something of a disappointment with few of the elements matching the excellence of the film. The highlight for me was the playing of sam Archer in the title role. With a mix of vulnerability, eagerness to please and love for Kim, he made the role his own.

Public and critical acclaim for this latest production from Matthew Bourne has ensured that all Box Office records for a dance show have been broken at Sadler’s Wells over this Christmas. £2.8 million has been taken at the Box Office. A staggering 92,500 people have seen the show and with seats selling fast on tour, the productions looks set to recoup its costs easily before the end of the tour. Edward Scissorhands was also nominated for a South Bank Show Award for Dance.

An international tour that includes Tokyo, Seoul, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Paris will ensure that Edward Scissorhands will rapidly become one of the most successful touring dance shows created in the UK.

Alistair Spalding, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler’s Wells: "I'm delighted that our ongoing relationship with Matthew Bourne as associate artist has resulted in another outstanding Christmas season for Sadler's Wells. This is a very exciting time for dance. Its increasing popularity in every part of the nation's cultural life is aided enormously by the creations of Matthew Bourne, and Sadler's Wells is proud to support his work.’

Mathew Bourne said: " New Adventures is delighted to have once again broken the Sadler’s Wells box office record with our new production of Edward Scissorhands. We are dedicated to bringing highly entertaining and inspiring dance/theatre to as wide an audience as possible. The fact that 66% of our audience was first time attendee's at the UK's premiere dance house is particularly thrilling and speaks for itself. I have been privileged to watch audiences take Edward to their hearts and roar their approval at over 85 performances. I would like to thank Alistair Spalding and Sadler’s Wells for another wonderful Christmas Season and, as they embark on a 14 week British Tour, pay tribute to the hardest working company in the UK."

Matthew Bourne, famous for his legendary version of Swan Lake, directs and choreographs this new production with design by long-term collaborator Lez Brotherston. It features a company of 30 dancers from Bourne’s own company, New Adventures. Sharing the title role are rising stars Sam Archer and Richard Winsor. Both aged 24, Edward Scissorhands is already their fourth show with Bourne, having previously performed in The Car Man, Nutcracker!, and Play Without Words. Scott Ambler and Etta Murfitt have both acted as Associate Directors as well as creating leading roles in the new production.

Edward Scissorhands is the touching and witty gothic fairytale of a boy created by an eccentric inventor who dies leaving him alone and unfinished. Left with only scissors for hands, Edward must find his place in a strange new suburban world where the well-meaning community struggle to see past his strange appearance to the innocence and gentleness within.

Original music has been composed by Terry Davies. He has also adapted musical themes from the motion picture composed by Danny Elfman. Elfman is one of Hollywood’s most unique and best-loved composers. Recognised worldwide for his music for The Simpson’s, he has also recently written the theme music to the TV cult hit Desperate Housewives. Terry Davies’ previous successes with Bourne have included the multi award-wining shows Play Without Words and The Car Man.

The score is sumptuous and the set design is astonishingly realised, the story flashes along as sharply and as breathtakingly as Edwards scissor hands. The dancers all act with sly humour and a zest that makes the wierdly dreamy suburban world a place full of such vivid characters that you think you can hear their accents. No speaking of course, it's a ballet. It is just that the dancers inhabit their roles so completely that you are carried along by a fluidity of sometimes-grotesque movement that captures their characters' personality beyond just dancing.

It is extremely witty as well, the audience frequently laughed out loud and by the end, they cheered and stamped with tears in their eyes as the pathos of poor outsider Edward, so gentle, so frightened, so horribly disfigured, so unwittingly unwillingly dangerous - is realised in a drifting cloud of sparkling real snowflakes.

At the end of the night, Edward is left alone, there is no place for his extraordinary self amongst the other people. His flinching, terrified reaction to the first kindness he had ever been shown since his creator died - a gentle touch of a mother to his bleeding face, accidentally slashed by his own terrible knife-hands, and the moment where he and she both frantically tried to calm each other's fears and communicate with each other was the poignant counterpoint to the verve and gusto of the production.

Because of course, this is about despair as well as comedy, about adolescent alientation and the heartbreaking status of the outsider, the gifted, the different. It is on until February 5th. Go see, if you can. Or rent the movie. Soul-food this good is a treat to warm the heart in winter.

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